Sexy package
On this day in 2006 tenor Jonas Kaufmann made his Metropolitan Opera debut as Alfredo.
Jonas Kaufmann
159 pieces since 2008 — in 32 roles, at 19 companies, most often at Metropolitan Opera.
159
pieces
32
roles
19
companies
19
years
By role
Parsifal 6
Werther 5
Siegmund 5
Cavaradossi 5
Tristan 4
Lohengrin 3
Faust 3
Don José 3
des Grieux 2
Dick Johnson 2
Don Carlos 2
Canio 2
Calaf 2
Alfredo 2
Maurizio 2
Mario Cavaradossi 2
Ramerrez 1
Radames 1
Rodolfo 1
Nikolios 1
Florestan 1
Manrico 1
Idomeneo 1
Huon 1
Florestano 1
Enzo 1
Don Alvaro 1
Chénier 1
Carlo 1
Bacchus 1
Alvaro 1
Alfredo Germont 1
By company
Metropolitan Opera 19
Bayerische Staatsoper 4
Royal Opera House 4
Salzburg Festival 3
Salzburg Easter Festival 3
Bavarian State Opera 2
Wiener Staatsoper 2
Vienna State Opera 2
La Scala 2
Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie 2
Zurich Opera 1
Teatro Real 1
Royal Opera House, Covent Garden 1
Paris Opera 1
New York Philharmonic 1
Mariinsky Theatre 1
Carnegie Hall 1
Bregenzer Festspiele 1
Boston Symphony Orchestra 1
Role Alfredo
Undead of the night
For those pining for Puccini with the Met out of commission. Trove Thursday steps up with the composer’s brief first opera Le Villi with Krassimira Stoyanova, José Cura and Franz Grundheber, led by Simone Young.
Role Alfredo Germont
A jewel, despite the setting
The first time I heard of Ermonela Jaho it was as the ultimate understudy. In the aughts it seemed that every time Angela Gheorghiu or Anna Netrebko or whoever canceled, Jaho was standing by.
Role Alvaro
Thoughts on La Forza del destino: recordings
As said at the beginning, I implied I’d rather see Don Carlo(s) and listen to Forza.
Role Bacchus
Composer’s intentions
A live broadcast of the prologue to Ariadne auf Naxos featuring Julia Varady, a favorite sopranos in a role she sang only rarely.
Role Calaf
The 2023 Turandot is so overrated
The recent highly hyped studio recording of Puccini’s Turandot left me greatly disappointed.
By Moe Rear
153 comments
Hear the trumpets sound!
Frankly I thought Sondra Radvanovsky had reached her pinnacle with her Norma but I was apparently mistaken. I’m happy to say her Turandot is completely next-level.
Role Canio
Married to the mob
Contrasting approaches to Regie duke it out in Cavalleria rusticana & Pagliacci and Rusalka in Munich
Embroidered silk
Maria Agresta‘s delicately-acted, sumptuously-sung seamstress transformed what might have been just an average Wednesday night revival into something finer.
Role Carlo
Auto-da-fair
The Salzburg Festival has long had the image of this place where for a little over a month, the very best singers are brought together with the very best conductors and the very best directors to create the very best productions the opera world has to offer.
Role Cavaradossi
Charisma and chemistry
For this revival of Tosca Teatro Real has configured several casts with some of the best singers in the world: Sondra Radvanovsky, Maria Agresta, Anna Netrebko, Joseph Calleja, Michael Fabiano, Yusif Eyvazov, Jonas Kaufmann, Carlos Álvarez, Gevorg Hakobyan and Luca Salsi.
E avanti a lui russava tutta Roma
The Met got exactly what it asked for: a safely opulent, resolutely unchallenging Tosca that was far from shabby or little but couldn’t have been less shocking
The woman in white
This new DVD
release from EMI of the Royal Opera’s latest production of Puccini’s Tosca will no doubt be snatched up by hordes of grateful fans around the globe.
Three for the show
Luc Bondy’s Tosca returned to the Met on Wednesday night with an entirely new set of principals and conductor. The new trio of principal singers, all making local role debuts, could not redirect and redesign the production but they could allow their individual talents to outshine their surroundings.
super mario
Member of the cher public Max writes: Don’t know if you’ve gotten reports on this yet, but Jonas Kaufmann‘s Cavaradossi at the Royal Opera (May 23) was singing like I haven’t heard since young Domingo (only Domingo never had that kind of ease on top). You could feel the waves of sound from his “Vittoria” […]
Role Chénier
Thoughts on Andrea Chénier: the others
There were, of course, other Chénier recordings beyond the truly great ones…
Role des Grieux
The rules of attraction
Is Manon Lescaut a cold, clinical tale of the splendors and pitfalls of transactional sex, or is it a romantic Italian opera at its most lush and melodic?
A page right out of history
“This is obviously a difficult situation. But who knows Hans New Rock, knows his cool and objective aesthetic decision.”
Role Dick Johnson
Back in black
He returned. He sang. He didn’t get hanged.
Hello from the other side
A woman reads from the Bible. There is a dance scene in a tavern. The discovery of blood gives away the protagonist.
Role Don Alvaro
Cross purposes
“Has anyone ever seen a truly great production of this opera?”
Role Don Carlos
C’est une vraie voix
Don Carlos returns to the Opéra National de Paris and it’s an unusually happy occasion
(Yet more) Thoughts on ‘Don Carlos’: Coronations and finales
In any case, we are now in the Queen’s garden of the Palace in Madrid. It is the day before the coronation of King Philip. Coronation? What coronation?
Role Don José
How to train your dragoon
Let’s be honest: I was there for Kaufmann and Kühmeier, two of my favorite singers.
La Scala Upper West
Everything I need to know about Bizet I learned at a Judy Chicago exhibit in 1996. Brutality against women is pervasive, and society is culpable by permitting it. Such grievances were aired at the expense of the composer’s chef d’oeuvre Carmen yesterday at La Scala’s Gala opening, viewed dal vivo at Symphony Space on 95th and Broadway.
Txtng the La Scala season premiere
Nuns, Doppelgängers, ball gags, “third arms“? Your own Squirrel is on the scene at Symphony Space offering his eyewitness account of the prima of Carmen (as seen on HD, liveish from Milan). Up-to-the-minute coverage follows the jump.
Role Enzo
Thoughts on La Gioconda: the others
Yes, there were other Giocondas if not of quite the same distinction. Chronologically…
Role Faust
Montag mit Marguerite
Berlioz apparently couldn’t decide if his was an oratorio or an opera, so he labeled it a “légende dramatique.” Since its 1846 Paris premiere, it remains on both opera stages and in concert halls, with its first Met staging in 1906.
Experiment in error
It is, as Noel Coward remarked, astonishing how potent cheap music is. According to Brockway and Weinstock’s World of Opera, Gounod’s Faust was performed, after a rather lackluster debut in 1859, a thousand times inParis at the Opera between 1869 and 1894—a gobsmacking average of once every nine days.
Role Florestan
Once more with feeling
We humans tend to dislike uncertainty, therefore there is something comforting going to opera revivals; you know exactly what you are going to get.
Role Florestano
Woman behind bars
“Trove Thursday” presentsFerdinando Paër’s 1804 Leonora ossia L’Amore coniugale.
Role Huon
Tomb raider
Despite the continued popularity of Der Freischütz in German-speaking countries, are the magical mature operas of Carl Maria von Weber otherwise really so problematic, their libretti so unwieldy to explain their continued absence from the world’s stages?
Role Idomeneo
Mithridates is dead
Trove Thursday marks Mozart’s 264th birthday on Sunday with the 14-year-old’s remarkable opera seria Mitridate, Re di Ponto .
Role Lohengrin
Salvation for the savior
Kaufmann conveys Lohengrin’s immense loneliness in a profoundly moving way. I am happy to report that vocally he sounds completely recovered.
Theory of revolution
Jonas Kaufmann announced that he feels ready to return to the stage after calling in sick since last autumn
Mostly armorless
I’d never actually seen a production of Lohengrin before I agreed to review a new Decca DVD of Richard Jones‘s staging for the Bayerische Staastoper, starring Jonas Kaufmann, so I hope I’ve got this right: It’s about this architect named Elsa, who lives in an Orwellian steampunk Germany that has videocamera technology but still dresses like […]
Role Manrico
Nacht und Träume
We waited eagerly to hear the Munich-born Jonas Kaufmann make his role debut as Manrico at the Bavarian State Opera as well the German-Greek soprano Anja Harteros take on Leonora’s bravura difficult arias.
Role Mario Cavaradossi
She never sings anything twice
Can it all be true? She did what? He said what?
The art of making art
In this new Decca DVD of Tosca we find a highly intellectual, even fascinating staging at odds with the visceral nature of the original melodrama but one that inspires its cast to great heights. Robert Carsen is a clever producer with an elegant visual palette. He employs the same directorial strategy as his famous Mefistofele […]
Role Maurizio
See the pretty diva in that mirror there
The diva must be a Diva in Adriana Lecouvreur. Fact.
Old-fashioned
I saw the final dress rehearsal of Adriana Lecouvreur at the Royal Opera House on Monday this week, and I think I have never seen the place so crowded for such an event. No wonder, for here was a cast you might dream of, in a highly finished piece of work mounted by one of […]
Role Nikolios
Crime of “Passion”
Bohuslav Martinu’s The Greek Passion has had a rough life.
Role Parsifal
Du weisst, wo du mich wiederfinden kannst!
And what a luxury it is to experience this musically outstanding Parsifal with a cast of this caliber!
Fifty shades of Grail
The Met’s magnificent revival which opened on Monday night with a superb cast under the mesmerizing leadership of Yannick Nézet-Séguin nearly converted me into a devoted Parsifal disciple.
Speer pressure
One of the things that made François Girard’s 2013 production of Parsifal at the Met so compelling was the way he tried to make the tale of suffering and temptation relevant to a contemporary audience.
The cup runneth over
I am grateful to Sony for this new release
of the Metropolitan Opera’s latest production of Parsifal and I hope I’m not the only one who discovers what a rich experience this opera can be because of it.
Critical care
The experience of watching Wagner’s final opera Parsifal is frequently elevated to a spiritual occurrence, and productions have historically emphasized the religious dimension of the opera’s core themes of redemption and the dangers of temptation.
Equal rites
As with all good myths, certainly all the myths at the heart of Wagner’s operas, the juggling of symbols and archetypes and themes in Parsifal opens the piece to a great variety of interpretations.
Role Radames
A desert breeze whispering a lullaby
The studio opera recording is a rare beast these days and its arrival always a cause for celebration.
Role Ramerrez
Golden ‘Girls’ season finale
The conclusion of our Fanciulla del West video overview in three parts looks at a trio of performances from the 2010s.
Role Rodolfo
Rachel, Rachel
It’s nice to see Sony Classical backing a serious operatic soprano and not some crossover refugee from Britain’s Got Talent or another syrupy Christmas album from the world’s reigning Heldentenor.
Role Siegmund
Stage animal control
Following Gundula Janowitz and Janet Baker, Chris’s Cache sends birthday greetings to another favorite diva—Karita Matilla—with a quartet of broadcasts.
To the hilt
Marek Janowski’s second recorded Ring cycle began on an off note, with a Rheingold that was fleet and lucid but failed to impress in the important musical moments.
By Adriel
6 comments
Ring à la russe
Wagner is becoming an important calling card for Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Theatre.
Def Man Glance
Since 2010 I’ve been reading nothing but horror being heaped upon the Met’s new Ring. It’s been like a cross between a cruise ship size buffet spread of internet snarking and a slasher film re-cast with music critics.
Spy-jo-to-ho!
You really didn’t think your doyenne would let a top-secret dress rehearsal at the Met slip away without getting an exclusive on-the-scene report for you, the cher public? Now, did you? Well, if you did, you’re wrong, because La Cieca’s mole (pictured) has filed the following report:
Role Tristan
War! What is it good for?
The crown jewel of this year’s Munich Festival is undoubtedly Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, which opened the Festival on June 29 and will close the Festival with an “Opera for All” screening on July 31.
One night only
Christine Goerke‘s distracted, tentative Isolde turned out to be the least potent feature of what was an otherwise exciting and effective second act of Tristan.
They live by night
A heady audience paid top price to pack Carnegie Hall Thursday for just 80 minutes of unstaged Wagner.
Frau Minne
“Trove Thursday” presents a live Tristan 2 concert featuring one of my favorite dramatic sopranos. Gertrude Grob-Prandl.
Role Werther
The year in Corwin
New York City isn’t a bad place to live, operatically-speaking.
Full of beans
It’s been a bitterly cold winter in NY. When it’s bitterly cold, the air is dry.
Winter wonder man
Life is not fair. There are rules that apply to Jonas Kaufmann, and rules that apply to everyone else.
Werther, original
Decca has released a remarkable performance of Massenet’s great romantic tragedy Werther. Filmed live in January 2010, this performance stands out primarily for the great singing and dramatic vitality of the principals, particularly the remarkable Werther of Jonas Kaufmann. It is rare to hear a tenor voice with this much heft, body and color phrase […]
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I’ll take the fall
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).
